1. Field of the Invention
One or more embodiments of the invention are related to using a needle to draw blood from a user's arm for testing or donating purposes. More particularly, but not by way of limitation, one or more embodiments of the invention enable an automatic blood draw system and method that enables starting an intravenous catheter placement into a user's vein, drawing blood from a vein, cleaning a user's target area around the vein, transferring the drawn blood into one or more respective test tubes and labeling the test tubes.
2. Description of the Related Art
Current solutions for drawing blood from a patient or donor are manual in nature and generally require a person who has developed the skill to select an appropriate vein for needle puncture in order to draw blood. For example, a technician may place a tourniquet around the upper part of the arm to apply pressure to the whole lower part of the arm causing the veins to rise and engorged with blood. The technician may then wipe the area where the vein is, surface clean the area with alcohol, and insert the needle into the vein. Once the test tube is filled with blood the technician may hand label the test tube with the user information.
Generally, current blood drawing techniques present various problems. For example, one problem occurs when a technician punctures the skin but misses the particular target vein. The technician then removes the needle and starts over again.
Another problem with typical blood drawing techniques occurs when the technician misses the particular targeted vein and has to adjust the needle in order to advance the needle to the targeted vein, which may cause bruising and/or damage to the vein. In this scenario the patients experience multiple needle punctures until the targeted vein is located.
In addition, another problem with typical blood drawing techniques sometimes occurs when technicians remove a needle from a user's arm and then accidentally puncture themselves. This puts the technician's own life at risk from blood borne pathogen contamination. Furthermore, using current typical blood drawing techniques, the technician may insert the needle into the targeted vein too deep, thus puncturing the other end wall of the targeted vein, which may cause blood leakage under the skin, which results in a condition known as a hematoma.
Generally, using current methods, the technician may also mistakenly puncture the surface of the skin, a nerve and/or an artery of the user, instead of the targeted vein, causing damage and pain to the user's arm. In doing so, for example, the damage and pain from the punctured nerve may last for weeks or even months until the nerve has healed. Also, for example, if the technician mistakenly punctures an artery followed by removal of the needle from the artery, without proper pressure applied to the immediate vicinity of the punctured artery, the user may bleed to death.
Furthermore, using typical blood drawing techniques as known in the art, the technician may mislabel test tubes being used with incorrect user information, leading to various errors during distribution, testing and diagnosis.
For at least the limitations described above there is a need for an automatic blood draw system.